Techniques for improving sharpness by adding magenta dyes or yellow dyes to ortho type light-sensitive materials have been developed, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,429, JP-A-No. 61-116354 and JP-A-No. 61-116349. (the term "JP-A" as used herein refers to an unexamined published Japanese patent application). However, when a dye is simply added to the silver halide emulsion layers, it inevitably has the effect of reducing the photographic sensitivity due to optical absorption. Hence, methods in which these dyes are added to intermediate layers between the silver halide emulsion layers and the support have sometimes been adopted in the industry. But, with the provision of just a simple intermediate layer, the dyes diffuse during the coating of the emulsion layers into these emulsion layers; thus, there is still some loss of photographic sensitivity. Moreover, to make matters even worse, gelatin or some other binder has to be used to coat the intermediate layer; the increase in the amount of binder used inevitably has an adverse effect on the drying properties of the light-sensitive material.
To overcome the above problems, it has been proposed to use basic polymeric mordants to fix water soluble dyes, which dyes can be decolorized during photographic processing in the subbing layer of the support. Such methods have been disclosed in JP-A-No. 62-70830 and JP-A-No. 55-33172. These methods are very effective toward fulfilling objectives of the present invention. However, they fall short because the subbing layer has a coated gelatin weight of not more than 0.5 g/m.sup.2, and when a basic polymeric mordant is coated in this gelatin layer, the surface of the subbing layer becomes irregular. That is, stripes, ladder and comet, etc. occur to an intolerable extent. Hence, it is not possible to use the above methods to achieve excellent photographic performance.
A combination of a high molecular weight mordant and a dye having superior characteristics in comparison to prior art techniques was disclosed in JP-A-No. 62-70830; however, the mordant and dye of the present invention improves the fixing percentage and processing time decoloration for the various materials to achieve a material having even more superior effectiveness.